J.P. FOKKELMANN, Narrative Art in Genesis, JSOT Press, Sheffield, 1991, p. 62-70.§ 5. God has spoken. The story now moves to Jacob - with a sudden turn which is quite common for the O.T. after a theophany - and remains occupied with his reactions. The second part of the pericope has begun:
:
Waking up from his sleep, Jacob reacts to the sum total of his experiences in amazement. Unsuspecting and with an open mind he comes to the conclusion: so Yhwh is in this place, and I, I did not know it. But no sooner has this penetrated his mind than his amazement gives way to fear (wayyira) and he carefully phrases what this means as to the nature of his stopping-place. The narrator shows psychological insight; he knows very well, that people, when waking up, come to «the point» by degrees. After his first artless amazement, when his own position is not yet as stake, Jacob, starting to make deeper soundings and becoming involved in the situation, is himself compromised:«he was afraid»
Both of Jacob's reactions circle round the motif of «place». The word itself is used twice, when the second half of the story begins. But had not it been used three times already, precisely when the first half began? We clearly see the point of that now. Right from the start the story raised an important motif by hammering the word «maqom» home to us, with a threefold repetition, and it created suspense by raising the question at the same time, «but what place?» Now in vv 16-17 it refers back to the beginning by means of a double maqom and next answers explicitly with a double name, «House of God, Gate of Heaven».(1)
So the word maqom was not a false alarm but indeed a justified stylistic means. As a key-word it marked a leading motif right in the beginning, at least it was precursory to it. For an important part of the complex 'content' of the pericope is that Jacob's stopping-place is 'admat qodesh! What seemed to be merely «a place», with no face of its own, turns out to be the gate of heaven!(2)
But we do not learn this directly from the narrator. He has chosen direct speech, and thus he changes the narrative perspective again. Again he retires behind the back of his protagonist, as with the vision. There is a reason for this. That Jacob himself gives name to the nature of the place shows that at first he also did not know where he had retired to rest. For him, too, the identity of the place was a questionmark, «and I, I did not know».
The narrator has started off ingeniously. For of course he knew in advance that his story was to end in «Beth El»! He could have begun with a sentence like «Jacob came to a place called Bethel and spent the night there; but he did not know that it was a House of God», but then the beginning would have been insipid, without suspense. Because he does not reveal anything other than an always anonymous 'maqom' he represents what Jacob saw and knew, i.c. did not know. To this extent the narrator has succeeded in identifying with Jacob.
Another beginning would have produced another content. In literary use of language the shape is not an interchangeable garment but the necessary form of this content.(3) The content determines the form, and the other way around, form has substance. This is very clear in this case: the place was anonymous and actually, was not in the least a House of God of its own accord, but could only become one by virtue of an action by God. The place as such was not holy, not awesome (mind you, we are talking about the maqom in Gen. 28!), but it took on that quality by the theophany, as the 'form' conveys. If the narrator had dropped a name in the beginning, things would have been quite different! Now Bethel owes this quality solely to a once and only moment from the history of salvation.
Therefore it is not enough to say that the narrator has avoided an insipid opening by raising a question, an expectation. We should add that this phenomenon of the 'form' (first the anonymous maqom used three times, much further down maqom = Bethel) has been determined by a fundamental theological conception and it embodies this in the language. This conception, as we can read from the 'form', concerns the nature and the origin of this íadmat qodesh. The form itself is immediate evidence of the surprising action of God, which converts an anonymous place into Sha'ar Hashshamayim(4) and thus it is content.
Men we turn our attention to Jacob's words again, we observe yet a third moment in his mood; it lies between the other two and in fact constitutes a transition. After the words of amazement «Yhwh is in this place», Jacob expressly says, "I, I did not know" and we observe a note of shame. In these two lines the two main characters of the story have been put on opposite sides. It is worthwhile to search into their relationship here. Artless as he is at that first moment Jacob sharply registers the short-circuit in the situation. While formulating his own part in this he realizes that it was only a negative part. «I could kick myself» - shame and self-reproach steal in upon him and pave the way for fear, wayyira. In this fear his eye is sharpened for a deeper insight into the situation.
The result of this he also formulates. We shall consider another three details:
a) There is another repetition of words, twice we see yrí. Jacob became scared, but this is not simply a subjective matter, for example fear as a result of a bad conscience. Explicitly he himself points out that the cause of his fear is outside himself and objective: it is the place which is frightful. After his first spontaneous reaction, formulated on the spur of the moment, Jacob has come to objectify things and this is expressed in strictly factual statements and conclusions.
b) In this way we can also find an explanation for the fact that in the second instance the main characters have disappeared as subjects, and more particularly that Jacob does not mention himself anymore. His thoughts lead him to discern the nature of the place, which is defined by the theophany only, whether he, Jacob, yd' or not. The place is a House of God, and he cannot do anything about it. In his continued objectifying Jacob has no use for himself in his conclusions. This is on a level with what the verbal repetition of maqom has already told us earlier: that it is God's action only that converts the anonymous ëplaceí into Bethel.
c) The use of the phrase íen ze kií im shows that Jacob not only discerns, but almost recognizes with a shock where he is. The scales fall from his eyes: «that I should not have seen it earlier»! The facts allow him but one conclusion, this is no other than a House of God!
V. 18 opens with wayyashkem Yaëqob babboqer. This need not conflict with his awakening which takes place earlier in v. 16; nor is it absolutely necessary to suppose that Jacob went to snatch a little sleep after his words in v. 17. That would indeed be evidence of his being unmoved if not apathetic, and that fits neither the image we have of Jacob nor the situation. V. 18 a mean(5): «In the morning Jacob got busy at once,» and it is a self-evident continuation of his first reactions, which were verbal.
Apart from the anonymous maqom there was one other detail which had attracted our attention in the beginning: the peculiar mention of a stone as Jacob's pillow provoked our curiosity. This thread is now also cast off (for the time being). The stone in v. 11 was justified: it was to be a massebe, a monument, as we now see. To make the connection the narrator takes care to repeat the words wayyiqqah íet haíeben ... sam mera'ashotaw.
But why is it that Jacob set up a massebe, and not, for example, an altar? Let us spell the word masseba; it has a secret to let out. It is from the stem nsb which we have come across twice before in the story, as well as in the beginning. There a ladder was mussab and a little further down Yhwh himself was nissab. This surprising connection makes it clear to us why Jacob needs an erected stone. By setting up a massebe he wants to establish forever that he has seen a ladder with angels mussab and that Yhwh was nissab with him.
Once more, paying attention to a key-word has led us to an important part of the theme. Just as the ladder was a prefiguration of God's appearance, so Jacob now turns an erected stone into a postfiguration of the theophany. The anonymous maqom has changed into Bethel, the simple stone must therefore change into a monument aere perennius.
A small thing in v. 11 which we have by-passed now becomes meaningful. Jacob did not take «a stone», but he took [one] «of the stones of the place». König generally records, «So eilte die Darstellung sehr oft über die Erwähnung des Exemplars zur Nennung der ganzen Kategorie hin».(6) In this concrete text the point is this: by means of the turn meíabne... a maximal indefiniteness is accomplished; the stone has a minimal shape of its own, a minimal «personality», is an anonym. Until it is given a maximal individuality and personality as a milestone in the history of salvation!
The dance of key-words, however, is not over yet. Jacob pours oil on the stone - but not at random; then the text would just have said 'aleha, as in Gen. 35:14 b wayyassek ëaleha nesek wayyisoq ëalehs shamen. No, Jacob pours it ëal ROSHah. Is this detail, the mention of rosh, useful? In our story there is another rosh, in the beginning (for the third time we find a key-word there!), and it is there at a delicate point: where the heaven is touched by the top of the ladder, by its rosh. By means of the words ëal roshah in v. 18 the story reminds us of this.(7) By pouring oil «n its top»Jacob commemorates the ladder's reaching to heaven, just as by setting up the massebe he commemorated that this ladder was mussab on earth.
Because the narrator has given the massebe a rosh, we have a chance to define the nature of this erected stone. There is more to it than its mere use as a monument. Symbolically the massebe is the ladder and that is why the oil must be poured on its top. But in the place where the ladder lasted only the length of a dream, where it was a disappearing prefiguration, there is now the massebe as a postfiguration, eternal and indestructible.
Every massebe is unique in that it has been erected in a special place for a special reason, but at the same time it is only a specimen of the species. But the stone which Jacob has just set up is unique of its kind, because precisely its erectedness, which element has given it the name of massebe, is its most essential part and because precisely this essence is the most adequate embodiment, the perfect symbol of this never to be repeated event, the theophany at Bethel.
«This is a House of God» Jacob realized. Now that the massebe has been set up, the consequences follow: as the place is, so it will be called. Jacob gives it the name of Bethel. It is difficult to find out from case to case where qara le has been lexicalized and just means, «to give a name to», but in this case it quite agrees with the tension of the pericope and the «archaische Feierlichkeit»(8) of Jacob's actions to preserve the meaning of «to call». It is a solemn, sacral, cultic if you like, proclamation, which Jacob calls out over the place, Beth El, as a fitting continuation and conclusion of the erection and anointment of the massebe.
What was without a name has now been named, but now v. 19 b is going to tell us that the place did have a name! Normally we would have heard this as far back as v. 11, in, for example, wayyifgaë bemaqom weshem. hammaqom hahu Luz, a very frequent turn in the Bible. By postponing(9) mention of the name the narrator completely establishes the relativity of the importance and identity of Luz, indeed he ridicules the place. «Place»? No, he even uses the word «town»! With superior irony this town is presented to us as an anonymous maqom, six times. Canaanite Luz does not stand a chance of existing, not even for a moment! Actually, it is a place without identity, without face, without local colour, a place which has been named Bethel before it has been able to represent itself as an important Canaanite town.
Whence this peculiar exposure of Luz as an actual nonentity? We get on the right track again by a chiasmus, which owes its origin to the less common(10) order of predicate plus subject in the noun clause v. 19 b:
This radical change, proclaimed by Jacob, originates in the taking place of God's revelation. Before the theophany transformed the maqom into Bethel, it had already accomplished another thing. By the theophany Canaanite Luz has been exposed, leached, purged to the zero-state of «a place». God does not want to appear to Jacob in a Canaanite town, but he wants to appear in a nothing which only his appearing will turn into a something, but then no less than a House of God. Where the history of the covenant between Yhwh and his people begins, all preceding things grow pale. Canaan loses its face, Luz is deprived of its identity papers. The narrator cannot write down this supreme moment in the history of salvation on a pagan clay tablet; only a blank slate is worthy of receiving his account.
Now we have come to a point from where we can look back and find the justification for the fact that it was to the vision that the honour was given of being represented as present. Jacob feels urged to respond, to do something after the revelation. His response, the massebe, is massive - "stone-hard" - so concrete is it; his answer links with the only concretely visible part of the revelation as described in the three hinne-clauses. In no less than three key-words together this link is represented in language. In the narrator's perspective the most concrete part of Jacob's reaction, which does not evaporate and always remains present, urges him to represent the scene to which it is linked, viz. the vision, as present breaking through the past. In the perspective of the narrative and in our perspective: by the overpowering, direct impression which the sight of the vision makes upon him, Jacob is inspired to the thought of and performance of a concrete answer which will always remain present; he succeeds in transforming one of its outstanding moments, the raisedness of the ladder and of God, and to fix it in an erected stone.
A find of genius on Jacob's part; however, only so by the grace of the composition of the narrative. «Die Sachverhalte (...), die Gegenständlichkeit (die natürlich auch Menschen, Gefühle, Vorgänge umfasst) ist nur als Gegenständlichkeit dieser dichterischen Sätze da».(11) He who wants to break through the garment of language to the story, misses the principle behind the formal structure of the Bethel. pericope and will therefore get lost in speculations. Historical research that starts from a literary text is not possible and thus not adequate until it has been determined to what degree the elements signified have been integrated into the structure, how here too «die Sätze der Dichtung sich ihre eigene Gegenständlichkeit schaffen».(11)
A very clear example is our massebe. Religio-phenomenologically and religio-historically it is not possible to say anything meaningful about it until it has been decided and until one is willing to take into account that this massebe here leads its own life, absolutely defined by the story. «Die Sachverhalte haben ein seltsam irreales, auf jeden Fall ein durchaus eigenes Sein, das von dem der Realität grundsätzlich verschieden ist»(12) What is supreme reality to stylistic analysis and exegesis, is to the historian material badly distorted by literature, from which he can draw conclusions only if he is very cautious.(13)
Notes
(1) The same stylistic method (first pass over a quality or identity on purpose, only later fix it) we find in the Jabbok scene: the «man» turns out to be «God». (It is striking that there, too, the identity is revealed by the protagonist himself, not by his narrator). It is also found in Gen. 22.8,14.
(2) The definite article with the first maqom in v. 11 may have had the function of arousing surprise and raising a question; but it is better to read, as does Ehrlich (Randglossen zur Hebräischen Bibel, Leipzig, 1908, vol. I p. 135), «a certain place». So does P. Joüon, Grammaire de líHébreu biblique, Rome, 1947, § 137n (3) about this shade of meaning in the article.
(3) So say Buber and Rosenzweig, op. cit. pp. 311, 257; Alonso, SVT 7, p. 163; Weiss, Biblica 1961, p. 257, and Hammiqra Kidmuto pp. 35-38; Wellek & Warren p. 28, W. Kayser p. 240; Dámaso Alonso, Poesía Española, ensayo de métodos y límites estilisticos, Madrid, 1957 (3rd ed.) p. 32f.
(4) No doubt Ehrlich is right, though, when he remarks: «die Wiederholung von zh im zweiten Halbvers wäre völlig unerklärlich, wenn Jakob nur auf eine Stätte hinwiese (...). Tatsächlich aber wird hier auf zwei verschiedene Stätten hingewiesen, nämlich auf die Stelle auf der Erde, wo die Leiter stand, und dann auf den Punkt am Himmel» (Randglossen, Vol. I p. 136).
(5) The verb shkm has grown away from its etymological root in so far as the aspect of the meaning «shoulder, withers" is not felt anymore; so it has become, more abstract - a development which is quite common in language. It is true that in such a case one has to find out from place to place whether the context activates the original meaning again, revives it by means of a connection of sounds, repetition of words etc. or not. (A fine example in Zeph. 3.7,9: there the repetition of shkm underlines the absolute reversal which God's action brings about, v. 9. Shkm in v. 9 activates in hishkimu, v.7, the original «shoulder» as a connotation; the shoulders that first served the evil are now united in the service of the Lord). Usually, however, the concrete aspect of hishkim is dormant, sometimes even totally obsolete: in Hos. 6.4 the dew is mashkim holek. The primary aspect of meaning has become: "early".
In the stories about the patriarchs the word sometimes assumes a position which it does not have in other places: it immediately follows an appearance by God: Gen. 20.8, 21.14, 28.18 (cf. Ex. 24.4, 34.4; but not in Gen. 19.27, 26.31, 32.1). We find the combination of wayyashkem babboqer, and with these words the story starts telling how someone reacts to God's word, or that he is going to perform a command of God. At this turning-point of the action and by the change of subject that goes with it, hishkim clearly acquires the connotation of «react alertly» 20.8 and 28.18, indeed «obey without delay and promptly» in 21.14 and 22.3. For in the two places mentioned last it strikes us that we do not hear about a nightly meeting and that a presupposition to that effect is beside the question; so that the notion of «early» is minimized. Cf. also Erich Auerbach on Gen. 22.3 (Mimesis, dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur, 2nd ed. Bern 1959, p. 12): «Also ist "das Morgens früh" nicht um der Zeitabgrenzung willen gesetzt, sondern um der moralischen Bedeutung willen; es soll das Unverzügliche, Pünkliche und Genaue im Gehorsam des so schwer getroffenen Abraham ausdrücken.»
(6) E. König, Stilistik, Rhetorik, Poetik in Bezug auf die biblischen Literatur, Leipzig, 1900, p. 201.
(7) The story itself takes care to make us aware of the connection with rísh. Keywords are like buoys at sea, they mark the way which the interpreter has to go. The word rísh is anchored by the word mríshwt: it occurs in v. 11 and is repeated explicitly in 18, to the point of elaborateness. In other words, it is a thread which we scan until suddenly we feel the knot itself, rísh, in our hands.
(8) Von Rad, Theologie des AT, p. 63 (München, 1961, 3rd ed.).
(9) Limmert, op.cit., p. 32 again: «Die Bauformen des Erzählens erhalten ihre Kontur erst dadurch, dass die monotone Sukzession der erzählten Zeit auf verschiedene Weise verzerrt, (...) umgestellt (...) wird.»
(10) The normal order for example we see in Jud. 1.23 «weshem haëir lefanim Luz». Francis I, Andersen, The Hebrew Verbless Clause in the Pentateuch, New York 1970, on p. 41 points to 54 places with shem. «The reverse sequence, that is with shem in S following P occurs only three times in the Pentateuch» among others in Gen. 17.15, where «the inverted sequence secures contrastive focus on the name itself». «Sequence P-S is used also in Gen. 28, 19 (= 303; compare Judg. 18.29, contrast Jos. 15.15; Isa. 5.7.» See also p. 45.
(11) W. Kayser, op. cit., p. 14. Also see note 49 below.
(12) ibid. «Irreal» is not pejorative here!
(13) «Historische und biographische Vorgänge in der Erzählung können mit Hilfe anderer Geschichtsquellen unter Umständen auf ein vollständigeres und sogar relativ objektives Geschichtsbild zurückgeführt werden. Zur historischen Deutung von Dichtungen ist dieser Weg oft beschritten worden (...). Solche Bemühungen zielen jedoch stets mehr auf die Hintergründe eines Werkes als auf das Werk selbst. Grundsätzlich besitzt die erzählerische Fiktion ebenso eine eigene Zeit-Raum-Konstellation wie sie überhaupt einen Lebenszusammenhang darbietet, der von der realen Wirklichkeit schon durch seine Abrundung kategorial verschieden ist.» Lämmert, op. cit., p. 26.